A celebrated revolution brought freedom to a group of enslaved people in northern India. Or did it Millions of people today are still enslaved nearly eight million of them live in India more than anywhere else. This book is the story of a small group of enslaved villagers in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh who founded their own town of Azad NagarFreedomvilleafter staging a rebellion against their slaveholders. International organizations championed it as a nonviolent silent revolution that inspired other villagers to fight for their own freedom. But Laura T. Murphy a leading scholar of contemporary global slavery who spent years researching and teaching about Freedomville found that there was something troubling about Azad Nagars success. Murphy embarks on a Rashomonlike retellinga complex constantly changing narrative of a murder that captures better than any sanitized account just why it is that slavery continues to exist in the twentyfirst century. Freedomvilles enormous struggle to gain and maintain liberty shows us how realistic it is to expect radical change without violent protestand how a global construction boom is deepening and broadening the alienation of impoverished people around the world.